In-House Counsel Conference
213N06: Face the many significant changes & new risks facing in-house counsel by arming yourself with timely updates & strategies. Consider how to handle financial & insolvency risks in a tight market. Enhance your insurance law knowledge & tactics. Examine significant defamation reforms. Catch up on new health & safety risks & obligations. Explore legal & tax issues involving contractors. Gain your core CPD points while examining ethics, bullying, wellbeing, technology, & reputation risks.
Description
Attend the full day and earn 7 CPD units including:
4 units in Substantive Law
1 unit in Ethics & Professional Responsibility
1 unit in Practice Management & Business Skills
1 unit in Professional Skills
This program is applicable to practitioners from all States & Territories
Session 1
The 5 Key Legal Issues for In-House Counsel in 2021
Chair: Judy Tomas, Head of Legal – Housing, Mission Australia
9.00am to 9.05am Opening Comments by the Chair
9.05am to 9.50am Navigating Insolvency Risks: Updates & Guidance for In-House Counsel Operating in a Tight Market
- The latest legal, legislative and market updates on insolvency
- The indicators of insolvency to beware of
- Key risks & considerations when dealing with other companies in financial distress
- Guidance for in-house counsel operating in a down market
- Risks to creditors of claims from liquidations: unfair preferences and more
Presented by Mark Addison, Consulting Principal, Keypoint Law
9.50am to 10.35am Insurance Law for In-House Counsel: The Latest Strategies and Developments
- Core types of insurance coverage
- Demystifying key insurance concepts
- Cover for business interruption under property and cyber policies
- Recent trends and market developments
- Maximising your insurance recoveries
Presented by David Gerber, Partner, Clayton Utz; Best Lawyers 2021, Insurance Law
10.35am to 10.50am Morning Tea
10.50am to 11.35am Defamation Law Reforms: Lessons for In-House Counsel
- Key changes to the law that you need to know about
- Changes to the process for concerns notices and offers to make amends
- The new serious harm threshold and public interest defence
- ‘Fixes’ to the current law in relation to contextual truth and damages
Presented by Marlia Saunders, Senior Litigation Counsel, News Corp Australia
11.35am to 12.20pm Workplace Health & Safety Update: New Risks for In-House Counsel
- Investigations into officers
- Liability of property owners and developers
- Liability for third party site/supplier incidents
- Industrial manslaughter update: how it’s playing out in practice
- Additional significant cases, developments and trends in the area
Presented by Katherine Morris, Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
12.20pm to 1.05pm Employees and Contractors: Legal, Tax and Practical Perspectives
- Why is this an area of legal and tax risk?
- Overview of recent case law about contractor vs employee
- Practical analysis: What risk factors should you look for?
- If you find a risk, how can you address it?
- How you can confidently enter into contractor arrangements
Presented by Elizabeth Ticehurst, Principal, Activate Law; Accredited Specialist in Employment & Industrial Law
1.05pm to 1.15pm Final Q&A and Closing Comments by the Chair
Session 2
CPD Compulsory Units for In-House Counsel
Chair: Darshana Parekh, Advisor, Huckleberry Retail
Ethics & Professional Responsibility
2.00pm to 3.00pm Your Obligations as In-House Counsel: Wellbeing, Harassment & Bullying
- Practical tips to identify and manage issues or complaints
- What obligations do you owe to your company and your employees regarding wellbeing?
- Navigating the rise of sexual harassment claims in the current climate
- Is it time to move from an ‘avoiding liability’ approach to a work health and safety ‘risk identification and management’ approach?
- Tips for handling claims and your duties to make the workplace safe
Presented by Amber Sharp, Partner, McCullough Robertson; Recommended Employment Lawyer (Employer Representation), Doyle’s Guide 2020
Practice Management & Business Skills
3.00pm to 4.00pm Utilising Data, Reporting and Technology to Bring Transformational Change to your In-House Legal Function
- Setting up a data and metrics framework
- Leveraging available technology within your organisation for data capture
- Using reporting and insights to demonstrate value and drive transformational change and continuous improvement
- Quick wins and building a long term transformational change strategy
Presented by Lisa Ziegert, Head of Knowledge and Practice Innovation and Alexander Vulkanovski, Legal Transformation Manager, Gilbert + Tobin
4.00pm to 4.15pm Afternoon Tea
Professional Skills
4.15pm to 5.15pm Crisis Management, Corporate Risk & Reputation
In-house counsel should not only understand reputation risk, but they should also be aware of internal and external threats and have in place strategies to either prevent or deal with a crisis should it happen. This session will explore:
- The biggest threats to your organisation’s reputation over the next three years
- What companies are doing to prepare
- Where the gaps lie
- The key drivers of reputation and how to uphold them
- Strategies for corporate crisis prevention
- Culture and crisis: the preventative role legal counsel can play
- Planning for a crisis
- The role of general counsel and communications
- What lawyers think of crisis communication professionals and how best they can work together (based on recent research)
- What to do when things go wrong
Presented by Craig Badings, Partner, SenateSHJ
Presenters
Judy Tomas
With more than three decades working in the legal profession, Judy Tomas is currently Head of Legal – Housing at national charity, Mission Australia. She leads the legal servicing for the Housing, Finance and IT functions. She works with General Counsel, Chief Financial Officer, the Board, Executives and Managers to deliver wellbeing and housing outcomes for vulnerable Australians. Judy assists stakeholders to deliver on strategy with commercial astuteness whilst navigating the regulatory and governance environments, utilising her speciality in property law, including financing of development projects. Her career has included roles with top tier firms, including partnership and she has also spent 10 years in house in both for profit and not for profit environments.
Mark Addison
Mark has 30 years’ experience in the areas of insolvency, commercial disputes and litigation. He has acted for many of Australia’s largest organisations, including listed companies, banks, large private companies, and government bodies both at the State and Commonwealth level. Mark has also represented a wide variety of Australia’s insolvency practitioners in corporate and bankruptcy insolvency matters. Prior to joining Keypoint, Mark was a senior partner at DibbsBarker.
David Gerber
David Gerber is a Partner in the Insurance & Risk group at Clayton Utz, and has almost 25 years' legal experience. He is a specialist insurance lawyer with experience in both general and life insurance and reinsurance. David helps clients both with their corporate insurance issues and resolving disputes, including insurance coverage disputes. This includes advice on policy interpretation, insurance claims, indemnity and risk issues, insurance regulation, product development and distribution, captives, reinsurance, portfolio transfers, and the insurance aspects of major projects, M&A and other commercial transactions.
Marlia Saunders
Marlia Saunders is a senior media/IP lawyer with top-tier international firm experience for 13 years, now working in-house as senior litigation counsel at News Corp Australia. She advises and acts for newspapers, news websites and magazines throughout Australia. Her role covers high profile defamation litigation, resolving editorial complaints, providing pre-publication advice and drafting commercial/IP agreements. She was involved in writing the submissions on behalf of Australia's Right to Know, a coalition of media bodies, in relation to the recent defamation law reforms. Over the years, Marlia has acted for or advised a wide range of clients in the media and technology industries.
Katherine Morris
Katherine Morris is a work health and safety lawyer based in Sydney. Katherine has over 15 years’ experience in work health and safety law, employment and industrial relations, representing clients across a range of industries including, construction, property, transport and energy and resources. Her experience includes providing strategic advice on health and safety issues, developing extensive compliance systems, safety incident management and advising on officer due diligence duties. Katherine has also represented and successfully defended a number of clients in high profile health and safety prosecutions. Katherine regularly speaks at various safety and legal conferences and conducts training programs for clients on a range of health and safety topics.
Elizabeth Ticehurst
Elizabeth Ticehurst is an accredited specialist in Employment and Industrial Law and is an expert in the emerging area of whistleblowing. With two decades of experience working in the legal industry in the Asia Pacific Region, Elizabeth has first-hand knowledge of the complexities of managing a diverse workforce across several jurisdictions. Elizabeth is a sought-after speaker and trainer, and regularly presents at external conferences and seminars. In 2019 she was a “Special Counsel of the Year” finalist in the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards.
Darshana Parekh
Darshana is a lawyer and advisor. She helps organisations navigate legal and commercial hurdles to bring to life strategic deals. Darshana is an experienced negotiator, facilitating relationships across stakeholders and in her previous role, managed contracts and negotiations across various airports in Australia and New Zealand. She is currently in-house with Collective Wellness Group and is an MBA candidate at the University of Sydney. She is also an advisor to SkyBuys, a startup that is looking to move duty free shopping to an online platform.
Amber Sharp
Amber Sharp has over 20 years’ experience as a workplace relations lawyer. She has particular expertise in discrimination, termination disputes, and bullying claims. Amber is praised by clients for her down to earth, straight talking and solutions-oriented approach. Amber is recognised in Doyles Guide and Best Lawyers as a leading employer representative employment and industrial relations practitioner.
Craig Badings
Craig has 30 years’ experience advising major corporations and senior executives in Australia and South Africa on their reputation in good times and bad. Much of that time has been spent working in the trenches with boards, management teams and in-house communication teams assisting them with issues and crisis preparation and management, media coaching and media relations, communication strategy, social media strategy and thought leadership. This work has included a cross section of sectors such as: financial services, professional services, education, medical devices, property and construction, FMCG, telecoms, tech as well as various government sectors. Craig has coached thousands of executives in presentation, messaging and media performance.
Lisa Ziegert
Lisa is an accomplished legal operations professional, with 15 years‘ of experience in knowledge management, information architecture design and legal technology. She leads a team on a variety of knowledge, legal data analysis and process improvement projects to deliver efficiencies. She has expertise in applying innovation methodologies such as design thinking to implement solutions. Lisa previously worked as a transaction lawyer at a top-tier law firm.
Alexander Vulkanovski
Alex provides technology and transformation support within the firm to help G+T optimise the delivery of legal services, with a focus on legal technology, process improvement and new ways of working. Prior to joining G+T, Alex had roles at Vicinity Centres and NBN, working in transformation, strategy, product and operational improvement. Alex has qualifications in Law, Commerce and Service Design.
Venue
The Grace Hotel
77 York St
Sydney 2000
NSW
Australia